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The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.0, the
fourteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system. Changes
from the previous release include scalability improvements
on multi-core systems, many new and updated device drivers,
Xen and MIPS port improvements, and brand new
features such as a new packet filter.

Some NetBSD 6.0 highlights are: support for thread-local storage (TLS),
Logical Volume Manager (LVM) functionality, rewritten disk quota subsystem,
new subsystems to handle flash devices and NAND controllers, an experimental
CHFS file system designed for flash devices, support for Multiprotocol Label
Switching (MPLS) protocol, and more.
This release also introduces NPF - a new packet filter, designed with
multi-core systems in mind, which can do TCP/IP traffic filtering,
stateful inspection, and network address translation (NAT).

In addition to many other features, NetBSD 6.0 includes significant
developments in various ports. Some highlights:

SMP support for Xen domU kernels, initial suspend/resume support
for Xen domU, PCI pass-through support for Xen3, and addition of the
balloon driver.

Major rework of MIPS port adding support for SMP and 64-bit (O32, N32, N64
ABIs are supported) processors, DSP v2 ASE extension, various NetLogic/RMI
processor models, Loongson family processors, and new SoC boards.

Improved SMP on PowerPC port and added support for Book E Freescale
MPC85xx (e500 core) processors.

ARM has gained support for Cortex-A8
processors, various new SoCs, and initial support for Raspberry Pi.
Full support for Raspberry Pi and major ARM improvements to come in
a future NetBSD release.

time_t is now a 64-bit quantity on all NetBSD ports.
This means that the NetBSD world no longer ends in 2037.

The generous donations of companies and individuals to the NetBSD
Foundation in previous years has enabled TNF to sponsor some
exciting developments in NetBSD 6.0, including the Xen DOMU
multiprocessor support. See our donations page
for information about how you or your company can donate to
help sponsor
future projects!

Complete source and binaries for NetBSD 6.0 are available for download
at many sites around the world. A list of download sites providing FTP,
AnonCVS, SUP, and other services may be found at
http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.
We encourage users who wish to install via ISO or USB disk images to
download via BitTorrent by using the torrent files supplied in
the images area.
A list of hashes for the NetBSD 6.0 distribution has been signed with
the well-connected PGP key for the NetBSD Security Officer:
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/hashes/NetBSD-6.0_hashes.asc

NetBSD is free. All of the code is under non-restrictive licenses,
and may be used without paying royalties to anyone. Free support
services are available via our mailing lists and website. Commercial
support is available from a variety of sources. More extensive
information on NetBSD is available from our website:

Dedication

NetBSD 6.0 is dedicated to the memory of Allen Briggs, who passed
away in March of 2012.

Allen's technical contributions to NetBSD were significant, and many. He
was a NetBSD developer from the very beginning of the project, and was
the main driving force behind the initial import of some of our hardware
ports.
He also served on NetBSD's core team from 2003 until 2006.
More than that, however, he was a mentor to many on the project, and
always willing to help when he could. Even for those he didn't mentor,
his civilized example was often a guiding influence. He worked with
many of us on the
project, and in a field where prickly personalities are common, he was
always pleasant and kind regardless of your status or technical expertise.
He will be sorely missed.

Acknowledgments

The NetBSD Foundation would like to thank all those who have
contributed code, hardware, documentation, funds, colocation for
our servers, web pages and other documentation, release engineering,
and other resources over the years. More information on the people who
make NetBSD happen is available at:

We would like to especially thank the University of California at
Berkeley and the GNU Project for particularly large subsets of code
that we use. We would also like to thank
the Internet Systems Consortium Inc., the Network Security Lab at
Columbia University's Computer Science Department, and
Ludd (Luleå Academic Computer Society) computer society
at Luleå University of Technology
for current colocation services.

I had the pleasure and great honor of working with Allen Briggs for many years and considered him a dear friend. His kind, gentle way of living should be an example to anyone whose lives he touched.
I want to congratulate the NetBSD team for their achievement, and thank them for their heartfelt dedication of this release to Allen. He is indeed sorely missed.

Missing bit from the announcement: NetBSD-6.0 has much better FUSE support. We now support all FUSE API (high level, low level, kernel level), whereas previous NetBSD releases only supported the high level API.